Poor Marie Harf! Shortly after attaining immortality by having her name become a verb, she suffered the ultimate indignity: her boss left, and a white male has been hired to fill the vacancy instead of promoting her. Jamie Crawford and Elise Labott of CNN report:
Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, will shift over to the State Department, according to a senior administration official.
In replacing Jen Psaki, who recently returned to the White House to serve as communications director, Kirby would be the first spokesman to have represented both the Defense and State departments.
Kirby, who is in the process of retiring from the U.S. Navy as a two-star admiral, was favorably regarded by the Pentagon press corps for the way he worked with reporters, in addition to his grasp of the myriad issues and challenges around the world impacting the Defense Department.
It is more than a little weird to have the former Pentagon spokesman now representing the State Department to the media. It raises all kinds of “diplomacy is war by other means†issues, but at least Adm. Kirby is retiring, so he won’t wear his Navy uniform while talking to the press, as he has done at the Pentagon.
The AP reports that Harf, at least for the moment, is staying at State:
The officials said acting State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf may remain in the building to handle broader strategic communications and press issues related to the ongoing Iran nuclear talks. Harf, a former spokeswoman for the CIA and the Obama campaign, has been the lead press contact for the U.S. delegation at the Iran negotiations for nearly two years.
On Megyn Kelley’s show last night on Fox, it was reported that Harf is weighing some other offers. The prospect of being forced to handle the Iran negotiations with a straight face can’t be appealing, and suffering the humiliation of being passed over for Jen Psaki’s job can’t be pleasant
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